At that moment the train hit a set of points and Nicholas didn’t hear what his father had said. It was a shame because he had a sense it had been something his father had been building up to, but, partly because of that, it didn’t seem appropriate to ask him to repeat it.
‘It meant a lot to me,’ Ray said, ‘not only that you read the manuscript and commented on it, but that you went to the trouble of delivering it. You had to go out of your way and you must have been pissed off at me for letting you down. So, thank you.’
Nicholas smiled and Ray put an arm around him and pulled him in for a hug, which Nicholas allowed him to do. It was the closest they’d been, physically, in years.
‘You know, if you’ve got problems,’ Nicholas said, looking at his shoes planted on the carriage floor, ‘you can talk to me about them. Whatever it is.’
‘Thanks, son. I will,’ Ray said.
During Nicholas’ second year, he continued to do well in French and badly at German. He worked hard on the college paper, attending press screenings — in the presence of broadsheet critics Derek Malcolm and Philip French and, on one memorable occasion, director Andrei Tarkovsky — when he should have been sitting in Professor Fowler’s lectures on Brentano, Goethe and Tieck. His relationship with Liz deepened and that with his father survived one or two more instances of apparent unreliability on Ray’s part. He waited on tables in the summer and got three weeks’ work experience at Time Out magazine, where he did a lot of filing and was asked to write a review that didn’t get used. But, more importantly, he got the bug and he knew what he wanted to do after graduating.
His third year was spent in Paris. Liz’s course wasn’t the kind you could dip in and out of, and Ray explained that certain circumstances prevented him from travelling, though he didn’t elaborate on what they were. As a result, Nicholas came back to London as frequently as funds allowed. He told Liz he was worried about his father, concerned that he might be on drugs. It would explain a lot of his behaviour — the unreliability, the restrictions on travel.
‘Maybe he’s on a methadone programme?’ Liz suggested.
‘For all I know,’ Nicholas said, ‘he could be supplying. I can’t see how else he makes a living, unless he has a private income. Which seems unlikely. There was an RAF pension, but I don’t know if he still gets that.’
Liz shrugged.
‘It could also explain the presence of that weird guy at the party,’ Nicholas said.
He’d timed one of his trips back to coincide with the launch party for Ray’s second collection, Flight Path, which was dedicated to the memory of Russell Flynn. At some point during the evening, Nicholas had seen a balding man in an unfashionable velvet jacket being firmly encouraged to leave by a couple of senior editors with a lot of literary lunches under their belts. He’d also spotted his father watching the ejection from a safe distance and visibly relaxing back into a conversation with a journalist and a publicist once the intruder had left the premises.
‘And why he’s so thin,’ Liz said.
‘Is he thin?’ Nicholas asked.
‘He seems thinner to me,’ she said.
‘So you think he’s using rather than supplying?’
‘He could be doing both. But he’s definitely lost weight.’
‘You see him less often than I do,’ Nicholas pointed out. ‘You’re more likely to notice change.’
In his final year, Nicholas threw himself into German. A warning from the dean that he would almost certainly fail if he didn’t buckle down seemed to be the catalyst. As for the language, a few days in West Berlin, taken at the last convenient moment before the exams, over Easter, when it happened to be snowing in that part of Germany, helped more than he would have imagined possible. Just being surrounded by the language, both spoken and written, made an appreciable difference to his understanding and ability to express himself. In the end, he got a decent result, an upper second, and like most of his fellow non-vocational students went straight on to the dole. He tried to get more work experience, but that wasn’t happening either. He kept his hand in by contributing to fanzines. He and Liz, who was still studying, found a flatshare in Archway with two other medics. He saw his father on a fairly regular basis and came to agree with Liz that he was looking gaunt. Ray seemed as cheerful and positive as ever, offering words of advice at the same time as warning Nicholas he was the last person in the world who should be handing it out, particularly on the subject of careers. However, he was able to fix his son up with a week at his publishers — unpaid. Nicholas enjoyed it, but not as much as he had Time Out. He retained vivid pictures in his head of the ramshackle office, with its countless in-trays and bulldog clips, wire pigeonholes, sheafs of paper sliding off desks, dodgy swivel chairs. He loved the teetering towers of CDs, videos and books, the overflowing baskets full of old Jiffy bags ready for reuse.
The publishers’ office, by contrast, was much quieter and more sedate. He didn’t see any authors until his last day when a small flurry of activity greeted the arrival — and departure soon afterwards — of a first-time novelist.
Nicholas came off the dole to work a short-term contract at the National Union of Students as Information Officer. On the staff there he met another writer, Judith Meadows, whose first novel, The Summerhouse, had just been published. He proudly told Judith who his father was and she gave him an enigmatic smile. Over the next few weeks he realised all her smiles were enigmatic. He found a copy of The Summerhouse years later in a second-hand bookshop. On the back was a large photo of the author wearing an enigmatic smile.
The NUS contract terminated, Nicholas was sitting in the flat in the middle of the day writing another round of job applications when the phone rang.
He left the applications unfinished on the kitchen table and took the Tube from Archway to Goodge Street, then walked the short distance to Middlesex Hospital. He found Broderip Ward without difficulty. It was not how he imagined a hospital ward to be, especially an NHS hospital ward. It looked more like a hotel. A posh one at that. The beds had duvets instead of sheets and blankets. There were telephones by the bed and potted plants dotted around and comfortable seating areas with magazines and coffee machines. He found his father sitting up in bed writing in a notebook, which he immediately closed and put to one side when he saw Nicholas.
‘Hello, son.’
‘Dad.’
‘Sit down, sit down.’
‘Dad, what are you doing here? What’s wrong?’
Nicholas had learnt nothing in the initial phone call, only that his father was in hospital. He’d made the Tube journey in a state of suspended emotion, but with anxiety building up inside him. The sight of his father — thinner-looking, haggard even — was a shock. He had never before seen his father in pyjamas. There was a rust-coloured sore on his neck.
‘Dad?’
‘Nicholas. There’s some stuff I haven’t told you.’
‘You’re dying!’
‘No, I’m not dying. I’m not very well, but I’m going to get better. Do you know where you are?’
‘In a hospital. What are you talking about?’ Nicholas felt himself getting angry. His father appeared to be playing games.
‘This ward,’ said Ray gently. ‘You might have seen it on the news or read about it. It was only recently opened, by Princess Diana. There’s been a bit of fuss in some quarters. It’s too nice, there’s too much money being thrown at it.’